


World Was On Fire

by hiza-chan (callunavulgari)



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers, Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Zombies, Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-27
Updated: 2012-04-27
Packaged: 2017-11-04 09:54:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/392521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/hiza-chan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Upon the dawn of the world's very first zombie apocalypse, Axel finds love in the form of an angry Russian with a steel pipe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	World Was On Fire

**Author's Note:**

> Zombies, apocalypses, Russia and Axel as a team, French Axel. Written for rudy_flamthrowa at my song meme. She chose the line "Running away to save your life."

Upon the dawn of the world's very first zombie apocalypse, Axel finds love in the form of an angry Russian with a steel pipe. He meets him when the sun is rising over the remnants of Moscow, sunshine turning the snow into glitter and the corpses into sleeping bodies. There is blood and brains and Axel's got a death grip on an axe he'd found somewhere, but when he presses a hand into Ivan's, the other man smiles and doesn't pull away.

 

.

 

The kitchen is painted purple. And not the simple, girlish violet his sister had insisted on painting her walls in the third grade, but really purple. A purple-red so dark that it has no right being in a kitchen with dark counter tops and even darker appliances. The house is a two story with a basement, generally a bad choice of a safe-house because there are so many entrances. The windows, the multiple doors... can't sleep upstairs because you'll be stuck without an exit (unless you wanted to jump out the window of course, which Axel really, really didn't). Can't sleep in the basement for the possibility of the basement door being broken down. So they sit in the kitchen, contemplating garish and possibly morbid kitchen appliances in the early morning sunlight.  
  
Ivan's leaning against the kitchen counter, clutching a bottle of vodka he'd found in the fridge downstairs (and honestly, who the fuck had two refrigerators?) and eying Axel with that look in his eye he got before he was about to do something akin to _yanno what, fuck the zombies, let's screw each other's brains out for the next few hours and see if they notice._  
  
All in all, Axel's not too sure what to make of the look. Granted, it's been a while since Ivan had last given him the look but then again, the last time it had happened they'd been so busy moaning and whimpering into each others skin that the crash of the windows in the living room busting in had failed to register. Which... well, nothing says cockblock quite like a group of ravenous zombies.  
  
But hell, they're in a disgustingly purple kitchen of a two story house that has _two refrigerators_ , what else are they supposed to do? Plus, he'd seen a king sized bed in one of the rooms upstairs when they'd first scouted out the rooms for... other inhabitants and he was _dying_ to get out of this kitchen and break in that bed.

 

.

 

There are thirty of them. Thirty grinning, staggering, bloated bodies clustered around them, all pawing and hissing for a chance at their flesh. And judging by the racket the car alarm's making, more are probably on their way.  
  
Axel doesn't usually like to be a pessimist. He prides himself on his optimistic streak most of the time, because as he's been told before, he's probably the cheeriest motherfucker still living through this little apocalypse problem of theirs. Axel smiles as he plants a bullet through the zygomatic arch of an old woman, probably someone's grandmother judging by the old battered sweater hanging off her bony, emaciated shoulders. Maybe her name had been Sally, he thinks that she kind of looks like a Sally.  
  
It's funny though, the way most people who meet him automatically assume that he's this freakishly adjusted saint when really, he's just cheerful because he really, _really_ likes fucking things up, zombies included.  
  
The horde shrieks around him, makes him frown because yes, this time he's allowed to be a pessimist since it's probably going to end with their brains caught between a bunch of zombie's teeth.  
  
Ivan's warm, tucked up close against Axel's side- bleeding and wheezing, and that's probably not good, maybe a sign of fever because Ivan is _never_ warm. He's got an arm draped around Axel's shoulders, like he's trying to still kind of make an effort to hold himself up, but yes- Axel staggers and thinks that Ivan's really kind of heavy and he's not quite holding himself up at all.  
  
When he coughs, blood spatters the ground around them. Mixes with the shades of red that coat the cracked, uneven ground already and Ivan might be special, he may have lived for hundreds of years and may be the living embodiment of an entire fucking country, but when Axel looks at the ground beneath them, he can't tell the shades apart. Not really.  
  
Axel takes a deep breath, kicks out with his bad leg and tries not to flinch when it comes in contact with a grabber that had gotten too close for comfort. He shakes it off his leg, ignores it's shrieks and paws at his side, because he could have sworn he had a bottle of boomer bile around. It isn't there though, probably used sometime when they'd been making their way through the deserted streets of London. He sighs and pushes his sweaty bangs out of his eyes with the muzzle of his gun, wishes he had a hand free because he wants a cigarette so fucking bad right now that he's starting to imagine the taste of smoke in the clammy, blood soaked air.  
  
One, two, three bullets and four zombies go down, slumping onto the dirty pavement so their cracked and broken skulls can spill out onto the street. Axel giggles, ever so slightly hysterical, and thinks that up close, zombie brains don't look that much different than a humans.  
  
Ivan wheezes behind him when he laughs, shifting his weight to one side so he can get at his pack. Axel staggers under the extra weight, nearly crumples to the ground and tightens his grip on his browning because fuck, if he drops it now everything's over. There's the hiss of a struck match and Ivan's laughing again, the sound bubbling oddly in his chest. He's fumbling with bloody hands, trying to press a freshly lit cigarette to Axel's lips, smearing blood and dirt against the crisp white sides of the cancer stick in the process. His fingers press against the corners of Axel's lips when they slip the cigarette between, and they're sticky, clammy with too much blood and now it's all Axel can taste.

There are fifteen now, clustered around them in a moaning, shrieking circle and Axel watches as Ivan pulls back from him, managing to take out another three with one backhanded swing of his crowbar. Axel inhales gratefully, even if the smoke curls unpleasantly against his tongue, too dry, stale; lets the smoke stream out his nose and guns down a woman in her forties. She'd been wearing a nightie with blue ribbons on it when she'd died, her hand still clutching tight to her daughter's- even if the daughter in question has long since been separated from the hand.  
  
Axel feels sick, watching the glistening, wet shards of bone in that tiny hand and something in the distance is roaring- the sound of cars being shoveled aside like they're nothing, like they're the little toy cars that Axel and his brothers used to play with when they'd still been young enough to play games. Before the world had cracked and burned and the dead had spilled into the streets. All around them, the crowded freeway is turning golden with the rays of the setting sun. It shines oddly, turns the decimated, forgotten cars shining and new again, gleaming against zombie skulls and it's strange, the rays of light against these creatures because sunsets are too pretty to be shining down onto something so _ugly_.  
  
They can see it now, the cars flinging up in every direction, streets rumbling beneath them so badly that it feels like an earthquake. If Axel squints, he can just make out the garish, red skin of the Tank's hide.  
  
A shriek pierces the air and Ivan groans behind him, low and drawn and tired and Axel thinks, _Well, shit, we're about to get fucked._  
  
There's another horde making it's way towards them, likely drawn by the fucking car alarm and _fuck_ , but Axel know better than that. Knows to stay away from cars, especially on the freeway. But Ivan had grinned at him, the sun turning his pale hair gold and Axel had thought, "I want to kiss him."  
  
So he had, and they'd shuddered together, staggering and grinding against each other- Axel catching Ivan's moans with his lips and letting the other man push him back and down onto a nearby hood and-  
  
It had been an old car. They hadn't thought it would have an alarm, but it had been a bad time to be wrong about something.  
  
Ivan's panting something in Russian as he blasts through zombies, fumbling blood slick fingers into the pocket of Axel's jeans for their extra gun. The shots are loud and it's like the sound of them cuts through the world, slows everything down, tick tock tick tock, counterclockwise clock.  
  
The tank's getting closer. Axel can hear it's scream now, can hear the scrape of cars and the crunch of bones as it clamors over its undead brethren. Ivan sighs, long, slow- too fucking tired- and lowers his gun, slumps back against Axel and well, maybe he had been holding himself up a bit because now it's like Axel's got 200 or so pounds of dead weight attached to his shoulders.  
  
"Ivan. Fuck Ivan, don't do this, to me you can't do this." But Ivan's quiet behind him, still breathing, still awake and Axel fires one last shot over his shoulder before spinning to press their chests together. He thinks his eyes might be watering, just a little, knows that they're wild and scared. He wonders what Russia thinks of him.

" _Russie_ , please. Please, we can still do this. Come on, _Russie, j'ai besoin de toi._ " Ivan's temple is clammier then his hands had been, and when Axel presses a quick kiss there, Ivan jerks as if burned. "Please, please, _mon coeur est à toi, je t'aime à la folie. Je t'ai dans la peau_ , you can't, you can't-" his voice cracks and it hurts when a sob bubbles up into his throat because fuck, he's sick of watching people he cares about die. He'd been sick of it seconds after he'd pulled the trigger and watched Roxas slump back onto damp grass, minutes after he'd gathered Roxas' body into his arms, hours after he'd set the body ablaze.  
  
Ivan, Russia- he's all that Axel has left, and it can't end like this. Russia, fucking _Russia_ , can't end on some nameless highway a couple miles out of Paris and-  
  
There's a click and a whir, a burst of dim light through the forest. _Safe house_ , Axel thinks, and he's pushing Ivan towards it before he can think anything else. Ivan's eyes are going wide and surprised at something behind Axel, and he shudders when he thinks of the tank, just yards away- wonders if Ivan will even be able to make it. His stomach twists, sour and helpless, and something like fate is slipping 'round his throat like a noose. Axel leans forward, presses a quick, sloppy kiss to Ivan's lips. His lips don't taste like blood anymore when he pulls back, they taste like snow and that first breath of winter and he doesn't understand but doesn't think that he really has to.  
  
He tries to make his glare as intimidating as possible as he fires off a couple shots over his shoulder, warding off the zombies that have just started to reach them.  
  
"You've got a lot of fucking people depending on you, _Russie_. Don't fuck this up." he says, pushes Ivan towards the brush- towards safety before turning to face the masses. And there are a lot. The tank barreling towards him, another fifty or so zombies behind it.  
  
He clamors atop an old, rusted car- too worn to even make out a name, and is almost amused when another car alarm starts blaring. His pack's run pretty empty, just one first aid kit, a flare, and- yes, that's it.  
  
Usually, Molotov cocktails are kind of Ivan's signature thing. He likes setting the zombie's alight before he takes them out, says it feels like a bonfire- warm. Axel usually prefers grenades, flamethrowers, guns, the occasional axe. But he figures Ivan will probably forgive him for it.  
  
His hand's tremble, the cheap zippo lighter refusing to light, and he curses, quick and filthy and _russian_ and a flame flares to life. He presses the lighter to the wick, lets it catch- tosses, waits-  
  
_Bang_.  
  
.  
  
It wasn't a grenade, it wasn't a grenade-- maybe.  
  
.  
  
The next morning Russia will emerge from the safe-house, wounds healed and closed, safely uninfected. He will make his way through the thin line of trees separating the neighborhood from the highway, trudge up the charred hill. He will dig through the carnage, turning over zombie after zombie, scowl deepening as the day drags on. Maybe he will find Axel, grinning and bruised but safely beaming up at him from beneath a beaten up Porsche. Maybe he will find his friend's body among the infected, drag it to the side of the road and set it aflame. Maybe he won't find his friend at all, and live out the remainder of the apocalypse hoping that the redheaded stranger had made it safely away.  
  
But maybe something will move whisper quick behind him, and he'll turn just slow enough that the only thing he sees is red drooping spikes and grey skin before- _crunch_ \- blood.  
  
Maybe the world will go black.


End file.
